RSDM Collaborates on Inventory Software that Increases Accountability, Cuts Waste

Collaborating with a logistics software company, Rutgers School of Dental Medicine has launched a new system for managing the school’s massive inventory. The WebOps platform allows RSDM to track all supplies, including dental instruments, as they move through the school. With 12,800 transactions a month in the D.M.D. student clinics alone, the system “provides a much better view of what we have, and where it is,” said Erin Bauzyk, executive director of Information Systems and Technology for RSDM. “It’s modernized the way we handle inventorying,” said RSDM Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs Michael Conte. WebOps’ dental dispensary platform was fully implemented throughout the school’s four D.M.D. student clinics in December. By tracking the whereabouts of dental instruments, disposable supplies and consumables, the WebOps system has increased efficiency and accountability, and reduced waste, Bauzyk said. Bauzyk, Conte and their teams played a key role in developing the new platform, identifying the school’s needs and inventory patterns, said Howard Weathersby, WebOp’s vice president for Global Business Development. “Rutgers has been a fantastic partner, helping us design the platform and work out kinks,” Weathersby said. With RSDM’s system up and running, WebOps has begun marketing the software to other dental schools in the U.S. and Canada. Weathersby said people at the American Dental Education Association told him, ‘If Rutgers uses it and Rutgers likes it, you are gold.’  RSDM began working with WebOps in 2018 with strategic funding from Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences Chancellor’s Office. The money covered equipment such as scanners and barcode printers, as well as software usage. WebOps adapted its flagship platform for tracking medical equipment to suit RSDM’s dental needs. It worked, but was not an ideal fit. As a result, WebOps in 2020 began designing RSDM’s dental school platform. They built the system focused on the movement of instruments and products “within the four walls,” as opposed to tracking inventory passing among numerous entities and across large geographic areas, Weathersby said. With the new system, a student starts the day getting sterilized equipment and other supplies from their designated dispensary. The dispensary employee scans the barcode on each item and the barcode on the student’s identification card, linking the supplies to that student. When that student returns dental instruments to the dispensary, scanning is repeated and items are checked in. “Students are locations” in the tracking system, Bauzyk explained. WebOps has shortened the time transactions take. The school warehouse and store are also connected to the system. When supplies are depleted to a certain threshold, the system signals to reorder them. WebOps also tracks products’ expiration dates, helping to ensure supplies are used before they expire. The tracking system will be further expanded at RSDM in phases. The next major area is connecting the sterilization suite to WebOps. Currently, the movements of instruments in and out of the sterilization suite are logged manually, Conte said. In the third phase, WebOps will be implemented in the postdoctoral clinics and three sites in South Jersey. That will require all instruments and materials in those clinical operations to be barcoded so they can be tracked. That’s critical for items with unique serial and lot numbers, such as dental implants, Conte noted. “Ultimately, the WebOps system will handle the lifecycle of clinical materials throughout the organization,” Bauzyk said. The full implementation of WebOps is expected to be completed within two years. ###